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Religion & Spirituality

Whether you believe in a higher power or not, this forum is dedicated to the topic of religion and spirituality. We live in a diverse world with different morals and ideas when it comes to our beliefs, so come in and share your thoughts.

"Many believers will say, "It is impossible for you to prove that God (Allah, Ra, Vishnu, whatever) does not exist. There is no way to prove that something does not exist." This is a silly argument for the following reason.

Imagine that we have a conversation one day and I say to you, "I believe in the gerflagenflopple. You cannot prove that the gerflagenflopple does not exist, therefore it exists." You can see that this is ridiculous. Just because I have invented something out of thin air does not mean that its non-existence is suddenly unprovable. There has to be some evidence that the gerflagenflopple exists in order to assert its existence. Since there is not, it is quite easy to say that the gerflagenflopple is imaginary.

Now let's imagine that we have a conversation one day and I say to you, "I believe in Leprechauns. You cannot prove that Leprechauns do not exist, therefore they exist." You actually have heard of Leprechauns. There are lots of books, movies and fairy tales dealing with Leprechauns. People talk about Leprechauns all the time. Leprechauns even have a popular brand of breakfast cereal. But that does not mean that Leprechauns exist. There is no physical evidence for the existence of Leprechauns. Not a single bit. Therefore, it is obvious to any normal person that Leprechauns are imaginary.

If you think about it, you will realize that there is no difference between God and Leprechauns. Lots of people talk about God as though he exists, but there is no actual evidence for God's existence. For example:

[note: in order to "see this page," go to the link at the bottom of this post]

God has never left any physical evidence of his existence on earth.

All historical gods were imaginary and we know it. (see this page)

None of Jesus' "miracles" left any physical evidence either. (see this page)

God has never spoken to modern man, for example by taking over all the television stations and broadcasting a rational message to everyone.

The resurrected Jesus has never appeared to anyone. (see this page)

The Bible we have is provably incorrect and is obviously the work of primitive men rather than God. (see this page)

When we analyze prayer with statistics, we find no evidence that God is "answering prayers." (see this page)

Huge, amazing atrocities like the Holocaust and AIDS occur without any response from God.

And so on…

There is absolutely no evidence indicating that God exists. There is a tremendous amount of empirical evidence that God does not exist. Therefore we can conclusively say that God is imaginary. That is the only thing that a rational person can say.

Another angle:

Here is a second way to look at the same question.

With every other object and phenomenon in our experience, we use the scientific method to determine whether it exists or not. For example, X rays are invisible, but we know that they exist. We can devise scientific experiments to prove that they exist. Then, once proven to exist, X-rays can be used predictably in all sorts of beneficial ways.

If you would like to hypothesize that God exists, then you should say to yourself, "Let's devise a repeatable scientific experiment to provide evidence that God exists." Every experiment we devise demonstrates, yet again, that God is imaginary.

Isn't it odd that God, unlike everything else in our universe, has been put into a special category? When we talk about God, we are supposed to do so "philosophically." Why? Why not treat God just like all other objects and devise experiments to detect his presence or absence?

The classic religious response is, "God must remain hidden. If he proved his existence, that would take away faith." This is clever -- here we have an object named God that proves its existence by completely hiding its existence. Of course, in the real world, any object that provides no evidence for its existence is classified as imaginary.

Even more interesting, this object called God, which is supposedly hiding its existence completely, is in the meantime supposedly writing books, answering prayers and incarnating itself. How can that be? This obvious contradiction shows how imaginary God is. When we look at prayer scientifically, we find that "answered prayers" are actually nothing but coincidences. When we look at the Bible scientifically, ethically or rationally, we find that the Bible is wrong. When we look at all of Jesus' miracles scientifically, we find that none of them left behind any scientific or historical evidence. Nor, for that matter, did Jesus, nor did Jesus' resurrection. Strangely, not a single historical source independent of the Bible ever mentions the resurrection.

The reason why we can find no empirical evidence for God's existence is not because "God is a magical being completely able to hide from us." It is because God is imaginary."

Willie Wonka quotes..What is this Wonka, some kind of funhouse? Why? Are you having fun? A little nonsense now and then is relished by the wisest men. We are the music makers, we are the dreamers of dreams

Well I've never met a believer who uses this as an argument. Most believers I meet don't employ an argument at all because it's based on faith.

Leprechauns have the distinct disadvantage in the existence department as there is no evidence of them, unlike God for which every perception is a perception of God (being the totality of all that is).

The most reasonable objection I've heard to that line of thought is that we already have words without as much baggage for that totality such as reality or possibly universe.

I understand and respect that objection. Apparently, the Japanese have many words for "smile" and the Eskimos have many words for "snow". I am saying that another word for the totality of all that is is God.

at1with0 wrote:Well I've never met a believer who uses this as an argument. Most believers I meet don't employ an argument at all because it's based on faith.

Are you kidding me? With all the arguments there've been in this forum, it's been brought up quite a few times. When they run out of rationalizations that have been refuted, many times they fall back on "you can't prove God doesn't exist, nyaaaa nyaaaaa."

I don't know where you've been, but that's their favorite thing to say.

at1with0 wrote: Leprechauns have the distinct disadvantage in the existence department as there is no evidence of them, unlike God for which every perception is a perception of God (being the totality of all that is).

Funny how I've never heard of such "evidence."

I don't believe what I believe because it's what I desire to believe. I believe what I believe because it's what logic causes me to believe.

EH..I so wish God (or just a ghost, even)would take the time to smack you on the nose or somethingIt'd be funny

Willie Wonka quotes..What is this Wonka, some kind of funhouse? Why? Are you having fun? A little nonsense now and then is relished by the wisest men. We are the music makers, we are the dreamers of dreams

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